Mobile Commerce – A Must Have For Every Business

The modern day of internet has dramatically revolutionized the way we do things in the world. It has driven the society from industrial age to a network era.

With the advent of smartphones, people have easily transitioned to making their regular utility payments, general research, news, communication – all through a single device. So, it is only natural for people to find mobile apps preferable for shopping.

The present-day scenario has also made e-retail and mobile-retail very prominent media from once being auxiliary sources, and some of the below stats also lay emphasis on mobile commerce (M-commerce) being the frontrunner for any business:

As M-commerce is only to grow in coming times, we have listed some of the elements for businesses to address while setting up this medium:

Seamless user experience

Building a mobile optimized store will help your business show up in searches and allow users on different devices to explore your products.

However, your app’s success doesn’t end with downloads, you need to provide rich UI, comfortable app navigation and speed. Usability encompasses the product information layout, design and effective payment system that helps user to accomplish their goals within the app. 

Moreover, limiting user input like entering their preferred payment, registration information and reducing search effort by storing their history, personalizing products will satisfy the users and drive conversion rates.

Omni-Channel shoppers

These are the shoppers that seek information from multiple channels before purchasing a product. Businesses should identify the critical path their typical customer follows while making a purchase and facilitate it by adding additional touch-point elements which help them gravitate towards the purchase.

For instance, if people are searching for a product on their phones, they essentially see the item with a picture, description, and price. But, if added information regarding the local inventory, in-store stock and aisle number of the product is provided, that will help them know exactly how far they are located from the product. Hence moving one step closer to purchase.

Streamlining M-commerce checkouts

Imagine a potential customer planning to make a purchase from your web store. It is easy to navigate on your website, through the cart page to checkout. But to his surprise, the checkout process is complicated than expected, with various forms to fill, personal and billing information to provide, only to discover the full payment calculation has not been displayed till then. Frustrated, he leaves your website and goes to your competitor for a similar product.

No matter how sophisticated your website, the checkout process needs to be as seamless and simple as possible. According to a study, about 69% of shopping carts are abandoned, and e-commerce retailers are losing millions of dollars in potential revenue each year.

Here are few ways to streamline your checkout process.

Offer Guest checkout:

One of the main goals of every e-commerce store is to learn more about customers. You can always build relationships through emails, targeted ads, and notifications on phone, but checkout is not the right time to force them to register on your website as it will turn them off.

A guest checkout option may seem like a missed opportunity to gain customer information, but a missed email address is better than a missed sale.

One click Payment system:

Alternatively you can provide the opportunity to access mobile wallets or mobile payment systems like Apple pay, PayPal, Google pay which will allow users to easily access their payment information with a simple touch instead of filling out lines of contact, shipping, and billing information.

Progress and clutter:

While you want your website to stand out, barraging your checkout with multiple images or unnecessary text is a sure shot way to lose your potential customer’s attention and a potential sale. Instead, opt for a simple checkout with minimal steps.

Also, if your checkout process is more than one page then keep your customer informed with ongoing progress and navigation, so that there are no frustrations with the complicated checkout.

Connect social media shopping

Social media from an expressive platform is now evolving into something called social commerce, where companies are selling their products directly using these platform checkouts.

If you already use social media checkouts, try integrating them to your e-commerce platform so that you can quickly redirect all that social traffic to your site. In a survey, Shopify reported that 55% of customers who have brought something online have found it on social media. So, staying in this trend will run your mobile site smoothly and change your happy customers to your loyal customers overtime.

Enhancements

When it comes to shopping on an m-commerce platform, personalization takes a bigger role. Keeping track of your buyer’s search history (post necessary permissions from the user), their interests and more importantly saving their regular checkout products in a list and displaying on the screen every time they login will make their shopping process stress-free.

Moreover, adding a floating ‘add to cart’ button will help merchants to increase their cart rate. Also, it will be useful to add a small cart button on top of every product which will make shopper’s life easy, as they do not need to click on the product and navigate to million pages before finally reaching checkout.

In conclusion, if you take steps to understand what m-commerce really is and how that relates to your specific business, you can develop a strategy that is more likely to convert mobile traffic into revenue for your company.

Content research for this article has been contributed by Spoorthi Duggi